"Faithless Electors" are members of the Electoral College who, for
whatever reason, do not vote for their party's designated candidate.

Since the founding of the Electoral College, there have been 157
faithless electors. 71 of these votes were changed because the
original candidate died before the day on which the Electoral College
cast its votes. Three of the votes were not cast at all as
three electors chose to abstain from casting their electoral vote for
any candidate. The other 82 electoral votes were changed on the
personal initiative of the elector.

Sometimes
electors change their votes in large groups, such as when 23
Virginia electors acted together in 1836. Many times, however, these
electors stood alone in their decisions. As of the 2004 election,
no elector has changed the outcome of an election by voting against his
or her party’s designated candidate.

Despite
these 157 faithless votes, and a Supreme Court ruling allowing
states to empower political parties to require formal pledges from
presidential electors (Ray v Blair, 343 US 214), 21 states still do not
require their members of the Electoral College to vote for their
party's designated candidate.

The 29 states (plus the District of Columbia) that do require faithfulness issue a small variety of
rarely enforced punishments for faithless electors, including fines and
misdemeanors.

2004 – Anonymous (Democrat, Minnesota)An unknown elector from Minnesota, pledged to vote for Democrat John
Kerry, cast a presidential vote instead for Kerry’s running mate John
Edwards (the elector also cast his or her vice presidential vote for
Edwards.) One Minnesota elector, who believed the Edwards vote must
have been a mistake, said "I'm certainly glad the Electoral College
isn't separated by one vote."

2000 - Barbara Lett-Simmons (Democrat, District of Columbia)Barbara
Lett-Simmons, a Democratic elector from the District of
Columbia, did not cast her vote in order to protest the lack of
congressional representation for Washington, DC. Lett-Simmons was the
first elector to abstain from voting since 1832. Her abstention did not
affect the outcome of the election.

1988 - Margaret Leach (Democrat, West Virginia)Margaret
Leach, a nurse from Huntington, WV, was pledged to the
Democratic Party. During the Electoral College process, Leach learned
that members of the Electoral College were not required to vote for the
candidates they were pledged to. Upon learning this, she decided to
draw more attention to the situation by switching her votes for
president and vice president. She cast her presidential vote for
Lloyd Bentsen, the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate, and cast her vice presidential
vote for Michael Dukakis, the Democratic presidential candidate.

Leach tried to convince other electors to join her, but hers remained the only unexpected vote.

1976 - Mike Padden (Republican, Washington) Mike
Padden, a lawyer from Spokane, WA, was pledged to vote for Gerald Ford,
the 1976 Republican candidate for president. Instead Padden voted
for Ronald Reagan,
who had run in the Republican primary and lost. For vice
president he voted for Robert Dole, Gerald Ford's running mate.

1972 - Roger L. MacBride (Republican, Virginia)Roger L. MacBride was pledged to the Republican party of
Virginia. However, in the 1972 election, MacBride did not cast
his electoral vote for Richard Nixon, the Republican presidential
candidate, but for John Hospers, the Libertarian presidential candidate.

He also cast his vice presidential vote for Toni Nathan, the
Libertarian vice presidential candidate, (making Nathan the first woman
to receive an electoral vote). MacBride ran as the Libertarian
candidate for president in the next election but did not receive any electoral votes.

1968 - Dr. Lloyd W. Bailey (Republican, North Carolina)Dr. Lloyd W. Bailey was an elector for the Republican Party of North
Carolina. He did not vote for Richard Nixon however, but for
George Wallace, the presidential candidate for the American
Independence Party. (Wallace received a total of 46 electoral votes).

Bailey claimed that Nixon had done some things that displeased him
(like appointing Henry Kissinger and Daniel Moynihan) and so he decided
not to vote for him. He also protested that he had never signed a
pledge promising to vote for any particular candidate and that his vote
for Wallace was justified because Wallace was the winner in Bailey’s
district.

Bailey later admitted at a Senate hearing that he would have voted for
Richard Nixon if his vote would have altered the outcome of the
election.

1960 - Henry D. Irwin (Republican, Oklahoma)Henry
D. Irwin, a Republican elector from Oklahoma, was originally
pledged to Richard Nixon. Irwin later admitted in an interview
with CBS that he "could not stomach" Nixon. He tried to convince
the Democratic and Republican electors to reject both Kennedy and Nixon
as presidential candidates. His choice replacement was a combination of
two conservative senators: Harry F. Byrd of Virginia and Barry
Goldwater of Arizona. In fact, he sent out telegrams to the other
electors.

Irwin received several replies (about 40) from other electors but he
was the only one to vote against his designated party. He cast his electoral votes for Byrd and Goldwater.

In
the same election 14 unpledged electors (eight from Mississippi and six
from Alabama) cast their presidential votes for Harry Byrd. All
14 also voted for Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina as vice
president.

1948 - Preston Parks (Democrat, Tennessee)Preston Parks was a member of Tennessee’s Democratic Party. He
was appointed as one of their state electors early in the election
year. Before the election, members of the Democratic Party split off
and formed the States Rights party.

Parks
vowed before the election to vote for Senator Strom Thurmond, the
States Rights Party candidate instead of Harry Truman. Another elector
also made the same pledge but ended up voting for Truman.

Thurmond, who gathered less than 3% of the popular vote, received a
total of 39 electoral votes. These votes came from Louisiana, Alabama,
Mississippi, and South Carolina.

1912 - Eight Republican ElectorsIn
1912, Republican Vice Presidential candidate James S. Sherman died
before the election. He was President William Howard Taft's vice
president and they were both running for re-election.

Eight Republican electors had pledged their votes to him but voted for Nicholas Murray Butler instead.

1896 - Four People's Party Electors In 1896, two parties, the Democratic Party and the People’s Party, ran William Jennings Bryan as their
presidential candidate. The two parties, though they shared
a presidential candidate, nominated different candidates for vice
president. The Democratic Party nominated Arthur Sewall and the
People’s Party nominated Thomas Watson.

The People’s Party won 31 electoral votes but four of those electors
voted with the Democratic ticket, supporting Bryan as president and
Sewall as vice president.

1872 - Sixty-Three Democratic ElectorsThe
Democratic Party nominated Horace Greeley for President in
1872. However, Greeley died after the November election but
before the Electoral College had cast their votes. 63 of the 66
Democratic Electors refused to give their votes to a deceased
candidate. 17 of these 63 Electors abstained from voting. The
other 43 Electors split their votes among three other Democratic
candidates.

1836 - Twenty-Three Democratic Electors (Virginia) The
Democratic Party nominated Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky as their vice
presidential candidate. The 23 electors from Virginia refused to
support Johnson with their
votes upon learning of the allegation that he had lived with an
African-American woman.

With these 23 votes missing, there was no majority in the Electoral
College and the decision was deferred to the Senate. In the end, the
Senate voted for Johnson as the vice president.

1828 - Seven Democratic Electors (Georgia) In this election, seven out of the nine electors from Georgia refused
to vote for vice presidential candidate John Calhoun. All seven
cast their vice presidential votes for William Smith instead.
Andrew Jackson won his re-election, with John Calhoun as his vice president.

1812 - Three Federalist Electors Three electors of the Federalist Party refused to cast their votes for
Federalist vice presidential candidate Jared Ingersoll. All three voted
instead for Elbridge Gerry, the vice presidential candidate for the Democratic-Republican Party.

1808 - Six Democratic-Republican Electors Six electors from the Democratic-Republican Party refused to support
James Madison, their party’s candidate for president. Instead,
all three voted for George Clinton, the Democratic-Republican Party’s vice presidential candidate, for president.

1796 - Samuel Miles (Federalist, Pennsylvania)Samuel
Miles, of Pennsylvania, was the first elector to break a pledge to vote
for a specific candidate. Miles had promised to vote for Federalist
candidate John Adams, but
instead cast a ballot for Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson.

While Miles did not affect the outcome of the election—Jefferson still
lost by three electoral votes—his decision still earns him a dubious
spot in the history votes, and the ire of many Pennsylvanians as the
following letter, published in the Gazette of the United States,
attests: "What, do I choose Samuel Miles to determine for me whether
John Adams or Thomas Jefferson shall be president? No! I choose him to
act, not to think."

FairVote research is cited in support of the National Popular Vote plan in Indiana, because "every vote cast for president should be equally important and equally coveted, whether it originates in California, Connecticut or Crawfordsville."

FairVote's Rob Richie writes that the Electoral College deepens political inequality, and explains why the National Popular Vote plan is our best opportunity to ensure that every vote for president is equally valued.

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation magazine, highlights FairVote's research in an important piece on the "broad support" growing in the states for the National Popular Vote plan to elect the president.